Some power plants and many industrial operations need to recover water from an available moist gas stream and to convert the recovered water to steam for use in the system. Typically the moist gas stream is passed through a condenser and the water which is collected is then boiled using heat from elsewhere in the system, which is usually high quality waste heat. Thus, in these systems, low quality heat of condensation of the water becomes available at the expense of the high quality heat used to convert the water to steam. In systems wherein the high quality waste heat is necessary in the performance of some other application, the loss of such high quality waste heat to produce low quality steam is an inefficient use of thermal energy. For example, in a cogeneration system, wherein a fuel cell is the primary source of energy, high quality waste heat from the fuel cell is required in the cogeneration application for processing, heating, or to produce additional electrical energy by driving an electric generator. The fuel cell system might also require steam, such as for use in a steam reforming reactor which converts hydrocarbons to the hydrogen which is used in the fuel cells. Pressurized fuel cell power plants, such as those described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,982,962 and 4,004,947 obtain the water for the steam reform reactor by condensing it out of the fuel cell exhaust gas streams, which are a source of high quality heat. The water is converted to steam in a separate boiler using this high quality waste heat, or by passing the water into heat exchange relationship with other sources of high quality heat. The result, in these instances, is less high quality heat and less usable heat for a cogeneration application and, ultimately, lower overall system efficiency.